Falling Down the Stairs
by MuddyWolf
Summary: It has been two years since Zenigata arrested Lupin and has secured him for good, but things are far from what they should be. Maria visits Zenigata one day at his apartment to find out just how wrong it went.
1. The Clown on the Windowsill

Legal Stuff: Maria, Zenigata, and everyone else in Lupin III are either Monkey Punch or someone else's.

Rant: I really don't care how people pronounce Lupin. As for me, I prefer the German and Italian pronunciation. All I ask is that people stop forcing the "correct" pronunciation on everyone else. "Loo-pahn" is all well and good for the Japanese, but we can anglicize the French "Lew-pehn" if we want, right? Lo and behold, if we use the English, we have the much-derided Funimation version. As much as most people like to complain about Funimation, they brought 10 specials/OVAs to the U.S., they could pronounce it "Lyu-peen" if they wanted to for all I care. We also have Harry Potter's Remus Lupin. No one's going to argue that point. But no, for Lupin III, you MUST PRONOUNCE IT IN THE JAPANESE WAY--never mind that Naya Goro and sometimes Kiyoshi Kobayashi pronounce it "Lew-pehn", and just recently I saw "Loo-pin" writen in Japanese. My point is, why can't people be more flexible on the subject? He's still the same womanizing, inccorigible master thief. I rest my case. Lupan enthusiasts, please leave the Lupin enthusiasts alone. ;;

Joy: Thank you for everyone who reviewed the last one! This time I wanted to do a thief!Zenigata fic proper, and I'll take pretty much everyone's advice and break it up into chapters. ;

A/N: Set sometime after Crisis in Tokyo.

Falling Down the Stairs

by Blue9Tiger

I: The Clown On the Windowsill

A giddy pattern of light browned the purple strands of the girl's hair that usually fell in a relaxed way about her shoulders, but on this blistering day were tense, sticky, and sopping from sweat. Despite the crushing weight of the hot air, she whistled some obscure tune about a secret yearning, cheerfully covering the sidewalk with genial strides. A mysterious concoction jostled in the pot nestled in her arms. The heat from the metal rose to meet the more relentless blanket of sun-drenched air. She wiped the pouring sweat from her brow with the back of her fingers, stopped to rest at the chipped fire hydrant, then forged on against a wall of midday traffic and heat.

Inside her, the heat of anticipation rose, spreading throughout her veins and filling her with girlish delight. A blush reddened her pale cheeks.

_It's been so long...Will he like my cooking? God, I hope he's cleaned up since last time.._

She raised her bright eyes in joyful hope---but then surrendered that brief gliimmer of hope to resignation. _Not likely. It's probably a disaster zone like always._

The clown danced frantically in her head.

Maria smiled. His sloppiness was irritating, but it was one of those constant quirks that she could always count on, that were as familiar as her dog's clicking across the floor, cautious at first, then more excited as he took off at a clumsy, fat run towards his food bowl. _I hope he's alright...that sitter never really liked him, but I couldn't take him with me, not in this heat._ She whimsically imagined Rufus' brown fur being blown about by the steady stream of wind from the electric fan.

Four blocks, the heavy pot, and the leering traffic cop put a damper on her energy and her cheery mood. She swayed in the grip of the sadistic heat and leaned against the urine-stained building. Maria scrunched up her nose and cast a less cheery glance at her watch. If she didn't hurry, she might miss him..! He was always more active when it was dark. That's when all the bad guys came out. That's when she stood beside him in the rain while he was on stakeout, he under his camouflage, her under her cat umbrella, neither daring to say everything that was on their minds.

A whole line of traffic by some weird accident played a zany 70s tune on their horns. Someone nearly ran her over with a bike. The sun still grinned menacingly above. I'll have time. I've just got to keep going. At least, the food will still be hot when I get there. She couldn't help noticing that she was quickly moving from the district's front to its back end, and she dilligently dodged the puddles of what definitely wasn't water and the heaps of trash that collected brazenly in the gutters. Passerby shot her rude stares, some dubious characters shot her evil looks from the alleys. One or two flashed a ragged grin short of a few teeth. The buildings grew some bullet holes, shattered windows. The streets grew a shady transaction or two. Women going to work dressed for the evening, but they weren't going to go get a story or take pictures, that was for sure. They started to flock to a broken-down old hole with a seedy flashing light that advertised cheap flesh by the pound. Maria clenched her pot even tighter and kept going, and finally stopped in front of a jail-like apartment building. She shifted the weight of the pot to her other arm momentarily to check the address that she had scrawled on her arm. A faded number 7000 affirmed that she had the right address. _Please, PLEASE don't be locked..._Relieved she turned the falling-apart doorknob and stepped inside.

She went in with her clunky pot and shifted it closer. It was actually muggier inside and it made an unknown stench smell even worse, and the pot was uncomfortably close to her body, but better that than spilling the hours of toil over what she had to say were the choicest ingredients that she could dig up. With a determined look she advanced up the stairs. The girl couldn't wait to see how he'd react--hadn't seen him after the day he had left Tokyo, off again on the Lupin case.

Maybe he'd be nice to her for once.

"Knowing the Inspector, I doubt it," she reminded herself verbally. Her voice made a lonely echo on the bare walls of the staircase, where every second step was crowded with cigarette ends. She went up the second flight, that seemed like a mountain after that fourteen-block trek. The twitchy hallway light revealed a fat, wheezing fly that sputtered from the small window past a soaked hair on her head.

Maria cringed a little at the grime clinging to the wall. Electrical wiring jutted out from the peeling yellowed wallpaper. The fly careened in a haphazard spiral out the barred window. Her gut rather than the invisible third eye in her head told her that the Inspector wasn't going to be particularly ecstatic to see her. Oh, well. "Maybe my cooking will cheer him up." She saw the fly roll back in and collide with the electrical wiring. A wave of melancholy settled over her. "This place is so depressing even the flies kill themselves."

Maria straightened herself and rapped on the door. "Inspector Zenigata! It's Maria! Ishiki Maria! I don't know if you still remember me, but---"

A warped groan of a reply growled itself out. It did not sound pretty.

"Marrriiia..!! Comeriighton iin, make yrself at hommerrgh..."

The girl hardly needed her unusual ability of seeing the future to realize that something was really wrong. He had been drunk before, but she couldn't shake the dread that had crept up on her and siezed her like a grasping claw.

"Inspector?" Her demeanor turned wary but she soon abandoned caution and threw open the unlocked door, meeting a solid barrier of bottles that scraped dissonantly across the floor.

She had seen his place before...the old place, anyway. It was a wreck, but...you couldn't even tell that someone LIVED in this hole anymore..Every free space--no, what free space--? There was no floor! Bottles, cigarette ends, old newspapers with the date September 29 circled in red in a frenzied hand. The baton that she had once seen in a sacred corner, that even back then was the only indication that a human being of some sort lived in the apartment, now lay half-buried beneath mountains of cigarettes cartons, unwashed bowls, plates, shreds of paper, and in the middle of this catastrophe was the Inspector himself--dead drunk, unshaved, reeking of old vomit spattered on his open trenchcoat, thick with the odor of a nauseating excess of beer and cigarette smoke. He had let his hair grow, kind of like that guy in the hat who was always with Lupin the 3rd, but you could tell that the guy in the hat at least kept himself reasonably clean. The Inspector's hair reeked of weeks if not months of neglect, his open, drooling mouth was poisonous with rancid alcohol. His tie lay undone about his neck, his shirt was half-open, wet with whatever that was she didn't want to know, his pants were ripped, and his socks had holes. He hadn't even bothered to take off his shoes, which were ripped at the seams.

Maria almost dropped the pot in horror. She had seen im at rock-bottom before, but this was more like...

"Hiiii, Mariiiaaa...liiike whhatIdone to theplaaace?"

_Whatever's beyond rock bottom, I guess._

It just couldn't get any worse. But a flash in her mind--uniformed men yelling, rushing up the stairs--police? Maybe a raid on someone else's room? Maria's voice turned shrill and urgent.

"Inspector, listen, you've got to get out of here!"

Just for once she hoped her vision was wrong, but cruelly, fatally, the trampling just down the stairs grew louder. It wasn't long before that two policemen burst into the doorway. An old gray woman screamed in fury and pointed accusingly at the drunk cop.

"That's the hooligan I threw out two weeks ago! Honestly, shouldn't an old woman be protected from these lowlifes?! I pay through the nose in taxes, where is my money going?! What do they pay you people for?!"

"We understand ma'am, calm down--he won't bother you again--"

The old crone's screaming was drowned out in the crash of now-broken bottles as the police lunged for their perpetrator. Zenigata reeled backwards--Maria couldn't be sure if it was the booze or an unconscious surge of self-preservation--but he suddenly became bewilderingly agile. He waded backwards through the mountain of trash, somehow knowing that it was blocking the only window in the room. He somehow got up on the chipped windowsill, and half-jumped, half-fell and landed without breaking anything. He waved his fist in inebriated impudence, hollering as if possessed.

"Youuuu'll neverr takeeme aliiiive!"

He stumbled in hazy glee towards the street, singing something off-key about a turtle before the police caught up with him and tackled him to the ground. Maria bit her lip and still clutching her pot, ran down the stairs, making the street just in time to spot the squad car angrily speed off.

A/N: There's chapter 1. Tell me what you think. Will Maria pass out before she walks another twelve blocks to the police station? Will Zenigata stay sober long enough to tell Maria what happened? And where is Lupin? Find out in chapter 2.


	2. The World's Sharpest Pair of Scissors

Legal Stuff: Maria, Zenigata, and everyone else in Lupin III belongs to someone else.

Rant: I prefer Jigen's large nose in red jacket. There he's snarky and sophisticated, he's watched Othello, likes classical music, and he even considers himself to be "an aristocratic bachelor". Compare that to newspaper-reading Jigen in the later ones. Though in Episode 0 you see silent and strong Jigen for a little while, but then when Lupin makes him laugh you see the snarky Jigen. But such moments are rare. So to all who don't like the Nose, you can keep clueless hood Jigen anytime.

Joy: Thanks for reviewing chapter 1! Zenigata needs more love. Unfortunately I've lost the inspiration for writing romances, so someone else will someday have to write Zenigata/Maria XD. She's so feisty. And didn't betray him like Emily. XX Or die like Laura. XX Wow, isn't it funny that Goemon is the only one who has almost-love interests with an Oriental name? (Kikiyo, Jinjao (?))

2: The World's Sharpest Pair of Scissors

"Visiting hours are over, miss. I'm not gonna say it again."

A broad-shouldered, stone-faced cop stood immobile at the locked entrance to the cells. Beyond that forbidding, barred door in the basement was her hapless friend, who'd been there for hours now, probably being eaten alive by the hardened criminals they tossed him in with, if not his own lice. Her head churned with anxiety. It was just her luck for everything to come up at the same time as this mess. She had been well on the way to the police station, but then her phone started shaking violently in her purse. It turned out that Rufus had gotten into a fight with the neighbor's cat, and the sitter was so insistent, she had to go all the way out to the sitter's apartment, clean Rufus up, sort everything out with the neighbor, and then her boss called her about the pictures she had submitted for the story, no good, we need shots from the front, don't ever give me this from-the-back crap again, and then she remembered that she had forgotten to pick up something at the convenience store----

It was past 3 AM by the time that Maria stumbled into the station, red-eyed, breathing hard, a complete wreck, and looking not so far from sketchy herself. It didn't help that Officer None Shall Pass was really grating on her nerves. Maria had tried everything for what seemed like the past five hours, even though it had only been five minutes. Reason, tears, digging up an old case she helped close--everything short of smacking the cop on the head with what was now her cold meal, which wouldn't be cold if Inspector Zenigata hadn't gotten himself arrested! Ugh...

Another one of the cops was staring at her quite intently and she didn't like that suspicious look he was giving her. The purple-haired girl stomped out of the station in frustation. Once out on the moon-deprived street, she glared with a shifty look over her shoulder, and made a run all the way around to the back of the station.

That eye in her head revealed a flash, which was brief, as all her visions were, but clear enough that she knew what to do with it. All of the cells were underground, but they each had one barred window overlooking the outside, both to ventilate the place and let the elements in. _How considerate_, she thought in contempt as she stopped at the rear of the building. A quick scan of it filled her with brightness. Sure enough, there was an above-ground window in each cell. Thankfully the station's security was limited to inside the building, leaving stubborn citizens like her to make a back-door visit.

But her visions were silent on which cell. She took a stab in the dark, leaned down to put her pot down on the pavement, and laid herself flat on the ground. She whispered through the barred window.

"Inspector?"

A loud snort and some half-intelligible noise answered her. An STD-riddled hand shot out through the bars and nearly grabbed her breast amidst maniacal laughter. Maria jumped, recoiled sharply, grew angry, and dug her heel into his wrist. The offender howled, and like a swamp creature retreating into the bog, the guilty hand withdrew into the darkness of the cell. She picked up her pot and chanced on the last window, her third eye still closed. This time she was more cautious, leaning down farther away from the bars, ready to fend off another pervert...

"Maria...?"

The coarse voice of her crazy friend ended her fears and she edged in closer on her elbows. Sure enough, there was the dirt-encrusted face of Zenigata, the whites of his eyes like two huge olives that disappeared now and then whenever he blinked. He pressed his greasy head up against the bars, gripping them with his sticky, reeking hands, crumpling his hat in the tight space. He got a closer look at the girl outside the cell and beamed in joy. "MARIA!" He suddenly burst into loud, unrestrained crying, the way he got whenever he was happy to see someone. He rubbed his red eyes puffy behind his tangled hair with his ripped sleeve and sniffled loudly. But at once he threw his head back. One of his cellmates groaned, scratched his stomach, turned over, and started snoring. Zenigata looked a bit more cautious and performed a near-impossible feat. "So glad to see ya," he whispered.

Maria wanted to say "Me too", or "Are you alright?" or "It's been a long time", but a mix of fatigue, frustration, contempt, and shock made it come out a little differently. Before Zenigata could snap out of his rapture and ask in anxious tones what she was doing there---after all, this wasn't any way to visit a prisoner, and if she got caught---the purple-haired girl momentarily became a raging demon and launched into a tirade as loud and shrill as she could manage in a whisper.

"What the hell is wrong with you, you idiot?! That wasn't even your home anymore, was it?! You ought to be ashamed of yourself, you and those bottles are practically making out, and ugh---have you bathed at ALL since---hey, Inspector, gross, let go of me...!"

"Maria.."

Zenigata reached through the bars and grabbed Maria's clenched fist into his grimy vice-grip and gave her a hard look that was completely sober and evidently loaded with despair and bitterness. Gone was the drunken happiness, that fleeting and ultimately fake fix, of that afternoon. Maria's barrage of criticism dwindled, and her silence told him that she understood that he hadn't fallen apart for any frivolous reason and that he was now in a position to tell her why everything had come crashing down. But here was hardly the place to do so. He relaxed his grip on her hand and closed it once more on one of the bars. "Look, you can't stay here, you'll get caught," he warned in his gruff, official tenor.

"Inspector, I didn't walk all the way over here just to be told to go home." She sat up, squatted, and crossed her arms. "You've got a lot of explaining to do--" She lifted the cold pot from the ground and set it in front of the bars and showed a smile that was unconsciously tender. "But first, eat up."

One of them would have to give in, and it wasn't going to be her, so he searched behind his shoulder again---still a clear coast---popped off the lid and dumped the contents into his mouth. It splattered all over the bars and his beard and his matted, crunchy hair, but Maria's eyes gleamed as none of it ended up on the floor. She looked pleased and smiled as the man whimpered and cried from the ecstasy of eating the food.

"Maria, this is amazing!" he broke the whisper, momentarily forgetting exactly where he was as he devoured it. A growl from his unconscious cellmates rapidly reminded him, and he lowered his voice once again. "No doubt about it, you'll land a man someday."

The girl smiled, but on the inside, she was crushed.

"Yeah, thank you, Inspector. I've been practicing."

"I can tell," he replied as he inhaled the last of it. The cop's eyes were dry and hard again--like a perfectly functioning faucet, there was no dripping water when you shut it off. He looked behind him again. Cellmates still passed out on the bunk, lone guard still sleeping. The gleam of a set of keys hung just out of his reach on the guard, stone-like, slumped over in his chair, his hat pulled over his eyes. He jerked in a sudden fit, shifted, mumbled, and started snoring. Zenigata turned his scrutinizing gaze back to Maria. "This is dangerous. You got to get out of here."

"Then lets go someplace safe."

"Maria!" he snarled under his breath. The cop started to sweat as she got up. "You're not doin' what I think--" A devious smile from Maria confirmed his suspicion. "No, no, you'll be helpin' me to escape! That's a criminal offense!" The girl rolled her eyes to the top of her head, tapping her chin with her forefringer, thinking. After a few seconds she shrank back to a squat.

"Um...so how will I get you out of there, Inspector?"

Zenigata made a visibly discomfited face. His eyebrows lay down in guilt. Stubborn kid wouldn't budge.

"Guard's sittin' about a meter away. If you get a pole or stick or somethin' that long---lessee..." He studied the cell, the guard with the keys on his belt, and the cell from opposite from his with a careful eye."I'm gonna need some scissors and some rope."

He hadn't finished saying "rope" when Maria took off down the street. Zenigata looked behind him again and rushed to the window. "Just make sure you pay for the damn stuff, got it?...!" he yelled just above a whisper and then whimpered dog-like, leaning his head against the bars. _What the hell am I gettin' Maria into? I'm in deep enough as it is. How can I pull an innocent bystander into the quagmire too?_ He scratched his beard pensively and started to pace. _It's downright crooked, just like..._He grabbed his thick forehead and clenched his teeth, grinding them them against each other as a storm cloud seemed to billow over his head.

_No, don't think about the bastard, that's why you're in this friggin' deep.._"Rot in hell, Lupin!!!" Zenigata shouted at the top of his lungs, so mired in his rut that he didn't care if his cellmates woke up and pummelled the shit out of him, or if---

Maria was back, holding an obnoxious neon-pink feather duster, heavy-duty scissors and a pile of rope.

"Don't worry, I paid for it," she assured, setting her unusual purchase on the ground. Zenigata maneuvered the thing through the bars, his haggard face lit up with a strange smirk. He crept up to the cell door with a deceitful walk, open-legged rather than closed and dignified and cautious of any stray noise. In the darkness the dully-hued keys glimmered tantalizingly on the fat guard's belt. But he needed something else first. Getting on his knees, he slipped the handle of the meter-length feather duster through the bars of the door, angling it towards the slumbering guard. He carefully dipped the makeshift pole into the guard's pants pocket. Thankfully the guard kept the cuffs in the pocket which was closest to Zenigata. He slipped the cuffs around the pole and pulled it back through the bars. Then he snatched the cuffs and dexterously tied the rope to them, a tactic he had used on countless attempts to capture perpetrators. The cop hurled the rope-cuffs out between the bars, where it sailed over the guard's lap and hooked one of the bars of the opposite cell. He tugged at it, making sure it held fast.

Zenigata then sliced off the end of the rope with the knife-like scissors---only his countrymen really knew how to make their blades--and he tied the scissors to the longer rope. He bent down and tied the rest of the rope to the handle of the scissors, gripped the second rope, then grabbed the first rope that had formed a sort of conveyer belt across to the other cell and raised it almost vertically so gravity did its work on the scissors which slid down towards the guard, and pulled it taut again once it hung just over his lap. Taking the main rope in his teeth, he grabbed the pole again, passed it through the wide ring of the keys, and with a tug of his other hand he pulled the scissors shut over the guard's belt. It snapped in two, and he caught the keys on the pole with a menacing jingle. The guard shifted, scratched his stomach that bulged freely now that the belt had been cut, snorted, and drooled onto his shirt.

The cop gripped the keys in his dirty fist, inserted the key into the lock and with the utmost care slid the door open.

Maria waited with bated breath out in the silent darkness of the early morning. She had heard the cell door open and fleeing footfalls. She waited for the sound to disappear and stood up. So many things could go wrong in those few short instants. She waited a full minute, her ancient but reliable pocket watch marching briskly on.

4:22.

Tck, tck, tck.

Relentlessly silent. Though it had cooled down considerably from earlier that day, she was hot with sweat. Any minute she expected to see the Inspector back behind bars, sheepish and red from shame. Irritatingly, no visions offered any hint. She was stuck like any other person, uncertain about the future.

When suddenly she heard a shuffle and the familiar voice of the man that, no matter what, always kept her running.

"Hey Maria, thanks for the help. What're you starin' at? I'm over here."

Maria's face lit up like a glowworm's and she almost jumped into his rough embrace--but the rank odor rising off from him, practically forming a toxic cloud of yuck, stopped her. She pinched her nose and yelled freely, now that the initial danger had passed.

"Inspector, you smell awful! Go home and take a bath!"

His slightly mischievous look collapsed into one of somber dejection that bubbled up and exploded into one of his characteristic outbursts. He was naturally loud: it came from his line of work, shouting orders to subordinates, shouting at the criminals he was pursuing, even shouting at his superiors, shouting at political leaders that could make his life pretty miserable if they wanted to. Shouting at the world that listened less and less the louder he got, like ignoring a constantly barking dog.

"Maria, I don't live there anymore, okay?!" He roared in exasperation, but then he simmered down into a neutral sullen growl since Maria hadn't matched his choler. "You figured it out yourself, I got nowhere to go." He gave an ironic chuckle. "Look at me, talkin' to you like this. It's pitiful."

Zenigata walked on ahead, his hands buried deep in his tattered pockets. His heavy, towering frame melted into the alleys, going at a careless trudge away from the police station. He didn't seem to be in any particular hurry anymore, now that he was out of headquarters. But he was out...now what? Could make a hole in the river..but he wasn't that type of man, and besides, some chemical company just spilled nuclear waste that he heard gives you tumors, so, no, no thanks. Bullet in his head? His Colt .45 was at the same place as his badge and his old pair of handcuffs, in one of the evidence bins back at the police station. Besides, he still had Maria, and that was enough to move on.

"Wait, Inspector, where are you going?" Maria asked, quickening her walk to keep up with him. It reminded her of the old days, rushing around to keep pace with him, but finding his energy to be frustratingly limitless. He was everywhere at once, riding the outside of a train, racing down an airstrip on a motorcycle, hitching rides on taxis no matter where he had to sit: passenger seat was fine but he would settle for hanging for dear life onto the bumper--there was no place he wouldn't go to catch that man, sewers, mountaintops, the deepest ocean, straight into hell---

The purple-haired girl caught up to him, and the man kept his gaze forward. He looked and smelled like someone on the street, but his demeanor remained grave and as straitlaced as ever.

"Don't know yet. But if ya want me to clean up, maybe at your place, if that's fine with you. I don't want to make any more trouble for you. Bad enough that ya helped me out back there. "

Maria waved his regrets with a cheerful hand.

"It's no big deal, Inspector. Mm-hm, you're going to get cleaned up, then you're going to tell me how you got into this mess," she declared with a flash of determination in her face, striding with a firm step on the empty walkway of concrete. One lonely car grumbled at a streetlight. Dawn started to arrive, each sunbeam trickling in like guests at a party. Her confident strut turned to a measured walk, realizing that he would take off as soon as he had gotten himself back in order. That's always what happened, anyway. "Then I guess you'll go after Lupin again. That's still what you're doing, isn't it?" she asked in a too-cheerful tone that betrayed some of her melancholy. But not to him. Her longing remained secret.

The old man stopped walking. He faced the chalky, stiff wall. As he stood there, it seemed like he was made of rusted metal and was just sinking into the mud. Maria didn't see Zenigata's eyes, but from the sob intruding in on his words she knew they were wet.

"Lupin the 3rd is dead."

A/N: That was longer than I intended it to be. Oo; Ah, well, hope you enjoyed it. Watch Zenigata spill his guts in chapter 3.


	3. Interrogating the Officer

Legal Stuff: Zenigata, Maria and everyone else in Lupin III belong to Monkey Punch and someone else.

Rant: I love the pink jacket series, though I don't understand a word of it. : ( Here's the most common reasons why fans will tell you not to watch it: It's badly animated, slapstick, and Lupin wears a pink jacket. I don't know much about animation, but they're moving across the screen and they're in color. That's all that matters to me. Pink jacket is JUST as slapstick as red jacket, and if you're looking at Geneon's red jacket, just as intentionally funny. Yes, Lupin wears a pink jacket. Does the red jacket make him any less flamboyant? He's still all over Fujiko. I don't see how cotton-candy blue, pink, and red is any more jarring than blue, red, and violet. I for one like Zenigata's light-green trenchcoat and dark pink shirt. Jigen's looking for love with an orange shirt. And Goemon is a man with big dreams and even bigger hair! There were three different art styles throughout pink jacket: the pointy/double chin/butt-ugly, round, and long/stretched-out. I liked the round style the best, though I think it was used in only a few episodes. And Zenigata disguises as a scruffy guy, an angel statue, a clown, a uniformed police officer, a convict, a Christian? priest, and I don't remember what else. Lupin finally avenges himself for green jacket episode 4 in what's a really hilarious scene. My only problem with pink jacket is that Lupin and Zenigata don't work together at all, (unless I missed something) and even the mob bosses are in pink, which doesn't really make the clothes distinctive. But I stand firm: Pink jacket is just as good as red jacket. If you're on the fence about watching it, watch it.

Joy: This is the chapter that I finally decided where I was going with this and it took an entirely different direction than what I first intended it to be.

3: Interrogating the Officer

The only thing that would have indicated to an outsider that Zenigata was not himself were the black bags hanging down to his cheeks and the blood vessels that looked like they were about to burst in his eyeballs. Aside from that, he never had cut a more distinguished appeareance. Now he was once again clean-cut, his hair short in regulation style, beardless, maybe a little stubble here and there, but rid of the wolf-mane that he had earlier, with no dirt on him or his clothes and smelling like---girl's soap and perfume. Well, it was the only thing that Maria had on her and he would raise an eyebrow if she kept men's cologne anyway.

He straightened his new green tie in the plain oval mirror. He was hunched over in front of it, because the mirror was practically microscopic._ Damn women and their compact mirrors_. Never mind that it was nearly as big as that weird clown doll on the one table in her bedroom---yeah, bedroom. He sweated--a lot of the time he came off as transparent-- but even he knew that this wasn't the most innocent of arrangements. But he had nothing to fear because he was a good guy. _Yeah, that's it._ He pulled on the tan hat that Maria had set out for him. The borrowed feeling of the new clothes was bittersweet in his mouth, but she had insisted, and she finally convinced him on the grounds that the cops were looking for a bum in rags. On those last grounds she convinced him, and the next evening had gone out and bought him a new suit from clearance or wherever you could get the cheapest suits. She had bought him another trenchcoat too, while chiding him half-jokingly, "I still think it makes you look like a pervert."

_Don't have to remind me._

Zenigata cast a furtive glance at the kitchen area, where Maria was bent over with her head shoved deep into the refrigerator. She had changed into nightclothes that were really just a pair of short shorts and an undershirt. A white undershirt. So much the better. He drooled, realized his mouth was watering, slapped his face, with both hands shook his head, and buttoned the bottom part of his trenchcoat so what was down there wasn't so obvious.

Maria looked expectantly at the poster-boy for respectability as he marched into the kitchen area. He plunked heavily down on the old mat that Maria had laid out for the both of them. Upright furniture was a scarcity here, the biggest moveables being the table on which her laptop and clown doll sat and her bed that stood at a weird angle to make room for the desk. Everything else was bare, like an ascetic or something. Which he didn't feel right now. Anything but. His intense round eyes fixed on Maria's fridge. Getting smashed would get rid of these untoward thoughts.

"Got any sake?"

"No."

"Beer?"

"No, but I do have..." Maria pulled out the beverage that she had been rummaging for in the fridge and placed it in his hands. He turned around the weird kiddie drink, shook it, growled, and read the label that was in a brighlty-colored balloon font.

"What the hell's this, apple juice?!" he grumbled.

"Plum juice, Inspector," Maria began with a hint of condescension, "you'd have to be crazy to ask me for alcohol after what happened, and besides, I don't have any."

Zenigata ruefully popped open the drink and started to down it in a loud gulp. He would have finished it at one go, but outside the open window down at street level, someone was playing music. Or what kids these days called music, anyways. He dropped the bottle which spilled some of the contents on the mat and he rushed to the window in his aggravated wide-legged stomp, almost slipping on the floor in his socks, and stuck his head out the window. A fat gust of wind rushed by, forcing him to grab his hat to keep it from flying off. "Inspector, wait, what are you doing?" cried Maria. She ran after him, hoping to stop him---no, too late. She sighed, kneeled, groaned in irritation, and set the bottle upright. Zenigata glared down at the source of the racket. It was four adolecents living it up like there was no tomorrow. They looked happy, too---his old cop instincts set him bristling in a rage._ Teens these days're nothing but trouble, and I should know 'cause half the punks I've busted were under 20, just gettin' their start in the business. I bet these kids're shootin' up right under Maria's goddamn window!!_ He raised his arm and shook it furiously at the music lovers.

"Hey, will ya keep it down, there?!" he bellowed, the spit shooting from his mouth. A drawling voice that indicated its owner was obviously on junk answered the now enpurpled Zenigata.

"What's it to you, man? We're tryin' to spread peace n' love!" the blonde yelled back while he wailed along with the noise. Must've been the lead singer. Probably pushing the stuff, from that cocky, arrogant look. Three others joined him in this unchecked revelry, one with foot-tall red hair decked out in beads, an androg with hair down to his/her waist, strumming a decaf version of a guitar. The last one, a broad, blew a lascivious kiss up at him, that no doubt went unreciprocated. He boiled in even more fury at that streetwalker's nerve and roared in menace,

"Peace and love's dead, the new craze is clean air, so get with the friggin' program and quit the noise pollution!!"

""Peace n' love's dead 'cuz your generation killed it!" barked the red-haired drummer, who started to bang his excuse-for-an-instrument louder just to piss off the cop. _They're not on junk...too smart for it, or somethin'. But damnit they're still delinquents---I hate their kind more than anythin'---tauntin' the establishment while hidin' behind the safety of "self-expression." That so-called gray area between honest society and crime. Makes my blood boil, damnit all! _He was two seconds away from leaping out the window, his eyes almost popping from his head. The punk with the red afro caught the old man's expression, grinned broadly, and egged him on more. "The Man and the fuzz're just two peas in a pod, pigs t' the end!" That was it.

"I'll teach ya to talk trash about officers of the law...!!" Zenigata, numb to Maria futilely wrenching his arm back, had thrown himself halfway out the window when he spied the wicked gleam in the lead musician's eyes. Something about it made his heart jump. "L---" His expression suddenly turned quizzical and he shook his head to snap himself out of that brief flirtation with optimism and shut the window, leaving the hippies to their racket-making which continued unabated outside.

Maria tapped her bare foot and balled her hands into fists which she placed on her hips.

"Well?" she asked, getting just a little impatient.

"Well what? Oh, right." The cop pulled away from the closed window, the music becoming strangely tolerable, he thought he heard the start of a 40s ballad in there. He plopped down on the mat again, which had a Zenigata-shaped impression, and grabbed the plum juice. "I brought in Lupin two years ago. Eveything was goin' fine. Judge threw the book at 'im. 'Course, I knew it was only a matter of time, never doubted it! Never.." His eyes reddened and his confidence dropped like a rock. "2 months into his sentence he didn't escape yet. I mean---" Maria caught his blunder. _Damnit, that girl notices everything!_ He looked for some way to save face. "Of COURSE he didn't escape! Tightest security ever for just one man! Not even a flea'd get outta there!" He laughed too loud. "6 months and he was still behind bars. Best security in the world--all that tax money paid off..! Hahaaaa---ha.." Maria's silence deflated his show of pride.

"And then?"

Zenigata sounded a good deal glummer. He took another swig of the plum juice and clenched his fists, squeezing the bottle.

"A year already and still not out yet. They told me---" He awkwardly pivoted on the mat on his knees to face the window. He wasn't going to cry over this in front of Maria. There was no way he'd let her know. "--they told me that they were gonna execute 'im next year. And they did. I saw it with my own eyes, they friggin' hanged him right in front of me!" he burst out to the window, the unceasing music, the empty night beyond. Maria was still silent. "Sure, rehabilitation'd be wasted on the guy, but they didn't have to friggin' kill 'im!!!" The girl watched him from the back. She could tell that he wasn't even trying to conceal his anguish anymore. He sobbed openly, the tears that, though he would never admit it, flowed most freely for this man and this man alone. "Lupin..." And then he suddenly remembered, amidst the haze of grief, an audible growl of acid bitterness rising from his throat. "Oh, yeah, next day they fired me."

The girl blinked.

"What, not even a suspension this time?" Maria ventured to interrupt. She had been with him when he'd been suspended. She had followed him day and night, drunk and sober, she had brought him home when he was too drunk to walk, he'd kissed her...she was puzzled. Why did she remember that, of all things? She shrugged it off and re-traced the wacky details of that adventure in her mind. He was at a low point, but he had hope, it was just a suspension, so he had a chance to get back on his feet---oh, he's getting ready to say something.

Zenigata answered with a resigned grumble of a sigh. "Not this time. They told me straight out that now Lupin was dead that they didn't need me. I begged---BEGGED 'em to let me stay on the force. I'd even do traffic duty." He turned around again, wiping his eyes with the back of his hairy hand. What was the point of trying to preserve the remains of his pride now? He looked Maria in one eye and wiped his nose with the sleeve of his trenchcoat. "Wouldn't even let me do that. So I figured, wherever there's crime...I made citizen's arrests!" he stated matter-of-factly, nodding with that justified expression to show it was just from logic.

"And?"

"They threw me in with 'em." He emptied the last drops of the plum juice down his throat before plunking it hard on the floor. "It's been downhill ever since."

His hat obscured half his face. Maria could only see one of his eyes, that burned with anger.

"No kidding," Maria remarked, lifting the cup of tea that she had managed to make while Zenigata butted horns with the flower children to her mouth. She lay it down on her lap, pensive. "So I guess it's just Mr. Zenigata now?" she asked, hoping that she had sufficiently masked the hopeful note in her voice. Not that she was overjoyed that he lost his job, that was terrible!--but...this was the chance that she had been waiting for, the chance to---she didn't dare tell him the thrill that rose within her at the anticipation.

He returned her query with an ironic half-grin.

"Don't think so. Don't think that my anceestors'd call me their own, not after I rolled their name in shit."

_Please say it..please...no?_

"Good point. But Mr. Zenigata---"

"Koichi."

Yes! Maria blushed and gave the impression of embarassment and thus concealed her ecstasy with proper decorum. Maybe it was too much to fantasize that he was just saying lines off a script as well. A script that dictated society's constraints, how one human being should address another, according to age, status, profession, the list went on and on. That she had just been given license to drop these conventions, to drop the Mr. that meant a gulf between her and him, cast off chains of sorts, those invisible weights that couldn't be seen but boy, could they be felt.

"No, I couldn't, it's not right..Koichi. _It's such a nice name, too._ So.." She took another sip of her tea. "So how did you survive up until now? It's been two years, right?"

"I was a..." He grimaced. "Clown. Not the most respectable, but at least it's honest."

The Koichi on her table flopped over onto its side. Maria supressed a girlish laugh. She could just imagine her friend, garbed in a big green clown suit, with a pink ruffled collar, all no-nonsense and making kids laugh just because he came off as so unfriendly. She admonished herself._ It's anything but funny to him. His work was his whole life. I can only imagine how hard it was for him. He's probably never seen a balloon animal before..._

"And then?"

"Beg. It's honest."

Maria grinned and shot him a naughty look. The ex-cop had left himself wide open to attack. Maria wasn't a stupid girl, after all. It's not like she had been waiting for the opportunity, but it was such a careless blunder that she had to take advantage of it. She couldn't resist. In a way, she was a bad girl at heart.

"That's all?"

"What do ya mean?!" Zenigata yelled in his shrill manner, his natural means of self-defense, lunging across the mat on his hands and knees in a an abrupt burst of choler. He knocked over the empty bottle that rolled with noisy intrusiveness into the wall. The mat jerked from his weight. Maria helped herself to more tea, and winked at the ex-cop, who was already bathed in sweat.

"What do you think? Steal."

"OF COURSE NOT!!!" he raged, hot and furious, red with what he hoped Maria would interpret as rage. The girl was unfazed. He could yell in her face all day and the most she would get would be annoyed, but hardly intimidated.

"Think about it, Mr--I mean, Koichi. How else would you afford all that booze money?"

"I EARNED it, Maria," he snapped through clenched teeth. That should be enought to end all these questions. Where the hell did they come from?! Where'd she get an idea like that, anyway? Still, he played it as cool as he could, which by his definition was the get-angry-enough-so-she'll-drop-it routine. But she had just gotten more curious. Damnit, she was enjoying it, too! Trying something different, he turned off the drama. Maybe he could play it cooler. "I draw the line at theft, Maria. No matter how bad I fall, I'm gonna die an honest man." That's it, case closed. Maria seemed to be buying it and he started for the door, wearng a morose air on his drooping shoulders. _Leave me alone. I'm gonna go out and get smashed again_. As he twisted the knob he heard Maria's firm voice behind him.

"Maybe, Koichi. But is swimming in your own puke worth being honest?"

"I'm not an alcoholic! You just caught me on a real bad day, that's all..." He gave a transparent grin and rubbed the hat on his head. Maria shot him a grave stare. _Looks like she's done playin' games... To think that someone like her cares for someone like me...I feel that warm feelin' inside, and not the kind that booze gives you._

"Please, just don't don't show up half-dead like that again."

_That's just a buzz and a killer headache and a date with the shitter. But it's the other end doin' the business. You're a real good girl, Maria. Can't say the same for myself, but I don't regret it. And about that binge drinkin', don't you worry, that's not gonna happen again. Or if it does, you won't have to see it, 'cause I'll be long gone._

Zenigata waved and showed himself out. As customary, no thank yous, little ceremony.

"Take care, Maria."

Like back then, neither said all what they had wanted to say. Funny..both of them were simple honest people and still the masquerade between them continued. A friendly smile, irritated concern, silence and fury, fighting with hippies.

_We should really be on the stage_, Maria thought as she finished the rest of her tea. The girl then went to the window that separated her apartment from the giant sprawling sky and watched the inspector's imposing form blend with the night's shadows. She saw him approach the musicians with an angry stride. The banging on the homemade drums and strings came to a sudden halt.

A/N: That's the closest it will get to a romance. Oo It's Zenigata vs. the hippies in chapter 4. Stay tuned!


	4. Strange Psychadelic Strategy

Legal Stuff: Zenigata belongs to Monkey Punch. The chapter title is a reference to the live action film.

Rant: If Zenigata doesn't get enough love, Inspector Ganimard in the Arsène Lupin series gets less. I was looking forward to seeing Inspector Ganimard in the 1970s Arsène Lupin TV show, but instead Lupin's enemy is Guèrchard, who is mousy. The more recent 2004? Arsène Lupin film didn't have Ganimard either. Ganimard gets his own (sort of) homage in the form of Ganimard III, (spelled Gallimard?) but he relied on computers and was really annoying. Then there was Detective Melon, who was better, but then she was against Zenigata, so big surprise as to who I rooted for. XD Too bad they didn't show more of Ganimard. No, they had to show more of Holmlock Shears/Herlock Sholmes. The English steal the spotlight from the French in their own show, how sad is that: (

4: Strange Psychadelic Strategy

"Can't you play that goddamn music somewhere else?! I'm tryin' to sort somethin' out!!"

The lead grinned from his knotted mat of unwashed blonde hair--another form of "self expression"--and made the peace sign with grubby fingers and dirt caked under his nails. No longer at rock-bottom, having at least gotten clean, and once again wearing the outer appearance of respectability with his new suit and the most important article that set him apart from your average joe, his trenchcoat, these people turned his stomach and he wasn't about to back down in showing his displeasure. "Damn nature-lovin' freaks, haven't ya ever heard of a shower?!"

A collective incoherent mumble of protest rolled out from the lot of them until the lead musician stepped up closer to Zenigata, who cringed from the pungent odor, and put the collective protest into half-intelligible words.

"Squares, man. Only squares shower. 'Sides, we just wanna spread love n' peace, baby. Feel all th' positive vibrations puttin' down all the negative vibrations comin' up from that cat's pad there, y'dig?" He pointed at Maria's room. "But now, they're like, all down here. The vibrations, man. " He demonstrated with a bizarre wiggling dance and the others followed suit with some pseudo-Oriental crap that to them was probably supposed to be connecting with the universal soul of the universe. "Virgo's way outta whack with Shiva, man---You're puttin' out major bad vibes," the blonde diagnosed with stoned confidence, pulling down his rectangular red-tinted glasses with his forefinger. It was a lame attempt to make the lenses opaque: Zenigata could see right through them to the punk's jeering black eyes. He was being laughed at, he could feel it..!

"Feel the love, feel the love," The two other males in the bunch had enclosed him in a ring and were now chanting their mantra, raising his hands over him and trying to connect him with the universal soul of the universe. Meanwhile, the only woman in the group grinded shamelessly up against his side in her flowered bell-bottoms. Zenigata yelped and backed away, crashing into the red-haired drummer, who stopped trying to connect the old man with the universal soul of the universe and started to beat his drums again with suddenly-acquired expertise. Though the drums were homemade and gave off a tinny, shallow sound, the big haired musician pounded out a relentless, throbbing rythym that hammered his ears.

"That's all a load of shit!" Zenigata matched the instrument's volume in by now what was pure irritation. He grabbed the blonde hippie by his greasy tie-dyed shirt and snarled in his face. "You think I'm gonna stand here and listen to this?! I've got a lot on my mind!!"

The androg had momentarily ceased his peace-inspiring mantra, and tossed his rebelliously long hair from his face. It refused to reveal his features completely, and an eerie smile glimpsed out from between the dangling strands of jet. _This one's got the love nature thing goin' on...why the hell aren't there officers on duty tonight?! This guy oughta be bagged for indecent exposure!!_

And he would've ordered nature boy to get some clothes to get some clothes on, but he had a faster mouth.

"Like, where to get a, like, job, like? Or if you ever will get one now that everyone knows your predisposition to criminality...?"

The guitar player sensed that Zenigata suddenly became unnerved. He had gotten louder, and it wasn't just to shout over the redhead's unceasing jungle rythym. Some smart ass was hiding a miniature disco ball somewhere, and the lights beat harsh and fast against the apartment building, as if to simulate a bad trip. The poetry wasn't lost on Zenigata but he did his best to put the flashing lights on the back burner for the moment and instead got into the face of the naked guitarist, defending his honor until he was hoarse.

"What the hell are ya talkin' about?! I'm an honest citizen, much more than can be said for the likes of you!!" he roared his throat dry, but at the same time he couldn't help but notice with suspicion that the nudist spoke too elegant for those flower-child types. Realizing that the old man was onto him, the long-haired one added a "dude" that was laughably out of place. Thankfully, he hadn't noticed. The ex-cop was now scrutinizing all of them, whirling around in a jagged circle because he was still surrounded, the drums, the lights, the rainbows, faces swimming in a sea of blurry color, fields of flowers...what the hell?! Had he shot up without knowing it?! No, he was still clean. They were pulling damn illusions...mind games...the realization grew that these guys weren't hippies. He scrutinized them closer. The drummer was sitting against the wall in a lazy, casual stance that he knew he'd seen before. But where? Stop the friggin' light show already! The red-haired one grinned wildly and was banging his drums at a frenzied pace. He seemed to revel in the old man's confusion, enjoyed toying with him. Same with the blonde, who was dancing into oblivion.

"We heard you from down here. That chick's onta you," Red yelled over his percussion.

"I already told you, I'm innocent!!" he returned with equal volume, but his voice had a frantic note in it, worried...why should he be worried?

_How the hell did they hear me talkin' to Maria?!_

"That little drunk hobo routine yesterday was pretty damn smooth, but isn't it a little cruel to lie to your girl? That's not peace n' love at all!"

"Who, that girl? Hah, she's no girlfriend of mine!" Zenigata laughed derisively, still too loud and forceful for it to be convincing.

_Routine?! How did he know about that?!_

"Yeah, old man, you've probably moved onto second base by now. Oh, but you're too square to make that move, aren't you?" whispered the leggy broad suggestively in his ear.

Zenigata turned scarlet. She went on dancing with abandon with her flying shock of hair to the rythym of Red's drums and the guitar strings that somehow acquired an Oriental sound despite it being an Occidental guitar.

"It's nothin' like that, I don't---nnhh.."

By now all four of them were starting to sound alarmingly familiar. They dropped the youthful colloquialisms, like ripping off parts of a disguise.

"Look, man, you don't have to get all uptight. We're no judge," Red said in a coarse dog voice. The drums had stopped, and he was leaning lazily back against the wall of the apartment building, one leg crossed over the other, with a bent cigarette between his teeth in a smirk, hairy Diogenes laughing at the world from his bathtub.

"And neither are you, you--were--" The blonde flower child snickered to himself at the 'were'. _Why you little...!!_ He winked, removing the tinted glasses with a certain unmistakable flourish. "--just a cop following orders. It was all business. But just so y'know..." Hope rose in the old man's gut. Hope?! But...no, it was impossible. "I'm into love and peace and all that, but when someone tries to off me, I'm no martyr. And you can bet...they'll pay for it in full."

The lead musician tore off his mask, wig, and the rest of his ensemble and Zenigata stood slack-jawed at Arsène Lupin the 3rd.

The red-haired one likewise pulled off the façade to reveal Jigen, grinning like a maniac as he plopped his own tireless headgear onto his furry head. The long-haired one likewise pulled off his second face. Goemon. He calmly removed the flesh-colored bodysuit to reveal his own robes, his eyebrows knit in perpetual irritation about something or other. And predictably, the woman was Fujiko, whose immature, carefree look faded into one of a woman who always knew what she wanted and who knew how to get it. Jigen switched off the projector. The bad trip was over. All that remained were four thieves in the murky night. Zenigata took a stomp forward, shaking from an unintelligble mix of fear, relief, disbelief.

"LUPIN...Can't believe it..I SAW you die..!"

"What, are you not happy to see me or something?" Lupin asked with a devilish wink. "C'mon, Pops, you know that you can't get rid of me that easily. And now..." A grin of wickedness cut open his palid face. He rubbed his hands together, probably hatching a plan like the brilliant criminal mastermind that he was. "Someone's gonna get what's coming to them!"

"Lupin, you seriously can't mean---" Zenigata's face fell. He tensed himself to face the inevitable assault._ I mean, I put 'im away, it only makes sense that the guy comes back from the dead and takes his revenge. Yeah, that makes perfect sense..!_ "Yep, I do!" Lupin chirped in reply to the sweating ex-cop, and winked at his gang. They suddenly scattered every which way, Jigen ducking into the nearest sewer, Goemon springing to the roof of the apartment building, Fujiko off down an alley "Seeya, Pops!" Lupin yelled, opting to run straight for a dead end. He tugged at the corners of his mouth with his fingers and waved his tongue while going cross-eyed. The sight of the red jacket, the smell of his European cologne, the feel of the VICE that choked the air whenever he was around, set the old fire ablaze in him, every disaster and every success evaporated into the past. All that remained was the prey and the predator, and he instantly charged after Lupin, yelling his usual threats of inevitable capture, lifelong misery, no mercy, phrases that he used just as much to motivate himself as to intimidate his would-be arrestee. _Somethin's wrong, why the hell did he go that way---I've gotcha now!!_ Any uneasiness that this might be fishy shattered: he was too berserk with the rush of the chase to put any stock into it. He whipped out the rope-cuffs that he still had from his trenchcoat pocket and flung them at the thief. Jigen, Goemon, and Fujiko had already vanished. Lupin sputtered, "W-wait, hey guys---Traitors!" he screamed, feeling the steel of the cuffs for what had to be the three-thousandth time clamp around his whitish wrist. Zenigata yanked him forward and gloated in triumph. Once again he was drunk, but this time, he was intoxicated with something that could be much more dangerous than alcohol.

"Can it, ya weasel, I'm takin' you back to headquarters. You're goin' straight back to Execution Island!"

Lupin showed a dejected face and played the meek supplicant--though he didn't have much room for supplication in the hands of Zenigata, who proudly dragged him to headquarters---but first made a brief stop at a store where he made a strange purchase. The receipt read: 1 pr sunglasses 1 rub nose 1 mustache.

A/N: Hey, look, Lupin is back! And caught again! Everything's back to normal! Or is it? Find out in chapter 5.


	5. The World's Two Most Wanted

Legal Stuff: Zenigata and Lupin belong to Monkey Punch. Ed Scott belongs to a guy who could have come up with a better copyright-friendly name. : (

Rant: Some fans have a problem with the language in Geneon's red jacket. I don't understand why they have a problem with it because the Japanese version has strong swearing, if less frequent. In my opinion, the swearing makes it more believable. I can't honestly see Jigen saying, "What the heck?" I love both the Geneon and Funimation version, but I can't stand Jigen's foul mouth being cleaned up. On a good note, I'm almost sure that Funimation let stronger swearing slip into Voyage to Danger, but I'm not absolutely sure. It was the part with John Claus. I could be mistaken. OO I'm glad that Fujiko swears as much as the male characters (at least in the English version, I don't know about the Japanese version) Another fun one is the German version. Lupin sounds more like he did in the pilot film, it's terrifying. OO

5: The World's Two Most Wanted

Zenigata marched into the police station and saluted, brimming with immense satisfaction. For some reason he was wearing the sunglasses, rubber nose, and mustache that he had purchased earlier. Never mind that he was beyond broke before entering the store, and had about two yen change when he had exited. That detail was of no importance whatsoever. One of the cops on duty, the one that had kept mental tabs on Maria when she had burst in the other morning, got up briskly from the desk and strode unsmiling to intercept the shifty characters.

"What's all this?" he asked curtly, looking the pair up and down without moving his head. One of those soulless, sexless chunks of dead flesh that, if it had a woman, she and her daughter would up and leave him and he wouldn't even notice. The old man smelled an accidental careerist, someone who would rocket to the top of the food chain just because that was the one and only thing he had. Sure, Zenigata knew what obsession was, he had practically written the book on Lupin, and knew him as intimately as you could know someone without knowing them carnally. Thrown family, country, reputation away, he used to have those things and it was more than he could say for the cop that was subjecting them to unrelenting scrutiny.

"I, a private citizen, have captured Lupin the 3rd as part of my civic duty!!" he accounted for himself in a public, non-civil way.

The other cop on duty, his plump stomach was pressed in a painful way against the table. He gave him a strange but unsuspecting look and drummed the desk with his fingers.

"Lupin...Lupin.." The cop welded to the desk turned the enigmatic name over in his mind. He thought it over for a few crawling seconds. The soulless officer had mechanically walked from view, leaving his pudgy equal to pull that ghost of a name from the dustbins of his hazy memory. Zenigata turned vermillion with impatience. This clod was a total idiot! A minute rolled by. The slow cop finally retrieved the lost memory from that lost dustbin. "Mm, sorry to tell you this, sir, but Lupin the 3rd was executed two years ago."

Lupin spied that Zenigata was about to sputter in protest, so he bounced up and leaped in front of the desk, dragging his captor who was still clinging to the rope. He leaned snarkily against the desk stale with the odor of cheap coffee and jabbed a thumb at his chest.

"Well as you can see, officer, I'm alive and kicking, so you'll just have to edit your records again, heeehheeehheheh!!"

"Shit, you ARE Lupin!" The boy in blue nearly fell out of his chair even though his cheeks were pretty much glued to it. That was news to him, that Lupin the 3rd was alive. He couldn't believe it, but who doubted what they could see? He magically disengaged himself from the chair and stood up surprisingly straight for a chronic sloucher. "Thanks sir, we'll take it from here." He grabbed Lupin by the arm with his meaty hand and started to drag him off with a maddening lack of urgency.

Without warning, the red-jacketed thief threw a remark in his arresting ex-officer's direction.

"What do ya know, you got me again!"

"Hey you, quiet," ordered the globe of a guy. Not particularly inclined to comply, Lupin became a row of teeth and snickered, again aiming his snide commentaty at the big-nosed guy waving him off unapologetically.

"Maybe this time they'll just skip all the red tape and shoot me on sight!" The devil in him popped out of the ground to play. "Huh, _Zenigata_?"

The old man went white.The cop stopped in his tracks, turning his head towards the so-called private citizen. The fish were biting. Zenigata threw up an ad-hoc defense to Lupin's shot to the balls, and marched officially but with strange calmness over to the cop, whose expression was one of possibly irrevocable suspicion.

"Don't listen to him, the name's Ed Scott! I just got off the plane from America! I got papers, if you need them," he offered evenly while rummaging in his trenchcoat pocket.

_Nice one, Pops, but you're not getting out of this one!_

"No, what're you talkin' about, man? You're Zenigata, you've only been chasin' me since I was in diapers!" Lupin gleefully clapped---more like slammed Zenigata on the back, knocking off the glasses, moustache and rubber nose off his face. His blood went cold as the soulless officerr returned with a mob of what had to be about nineteen cops, former fellow officers, many former subordinates---he caught a glimpse of the sergeant that he had once stomped on in the scramble to catch Lupin. None of them showed any recognition of what their former superior was to them. No hint of contempt or disgust, not even sheer disappointment. Somehow the blankness in their hollow gazes hit him harder than if they had spelled out to him their disgrace at ever being under his command. They formed a bleak unreadable wall around the both of them, Lupin bright like a smile button and Zenigata with his hands up and his pants down.

---

A plump brown rat that had squeezed into one of the cracks in the wall raised its nose in the air, grabbed a crumb, inspected it, deemed it eatable, and climbed back into its hole. The old man crouched on the floor because it was just a little hard to move around the cell cuffed both hand and foot. The police had only left him the dignity of his boxers: not surprisingly, the new clothes that Maria had painstakingly acquired were gone. Just his luck. He leaned up against the hard concrete wall uncomfortably, sat down, winced, and grumbled something about police brutality.

"It's not even protocol to restrain a prisoner when they're already locked up! It's goddamn overkill, I tell ya---and what the friggin' hell was up with that cavity search?!" he lamented at a scream-level that earned him a "quiet, you shit" from one of the cops passing through outside the cell. Zenigata complied resentfully, all red with fury. Lupin sat relaxed on the bunk, likewise almost naked, but enjoying a cigarette. Strangely enough, he hadn't been bound at all. The content thief took a drag from his signature brand and answered with an 'oh, well' shrug,

"Welcome to first class, Pops."

The 'first-classer' dug his chin into his bare knees and gave a derisive snort. Lupin bounced nimbly with crazed glee from the bed and landed next to him. "Come on, old man, it's not like you didn't see it coming---You know where I keep half my worldly possessions! It's handy when you're obligated to lose the clothes, you know?" He jabbed a forefinger at his morose cellmate and blinked quizzically."I mean, you couldn't be clean, right?"

"After the search I was," he shot a muffled growl into his skin. Lupin pointed, grabbing the back of his head with his other hand, laughing in hysterics, rolling on the grimy cell floor. He got up again and collected himself, joining Zenigata against the wall.

"But seriously, Pops, you would've gotten caught even without my help---I mean, just a friggin' rubber nose? A blind man could tell it was you! Now I know you're no amateur, so what the hell was that all about, huh?" He nudged his rigid cellmate with his elbow.

"Don't know...was just happy to see ya, I guess. After all this time, ya know?"

Lupin guffawed and got himself a razor-edged glare.

"The hell's so funny about that?!"

Lupin clapped his hand over his forehead, all creased from laughing so hard.

"Well, I don't know, Pops, I just didn't think you liked that sentimental crap---" Zenigata was enraged---here he was, trying to express his feelings, something that was hard enough for him to do, and Lupin the 3rd could only return his forays into humanity with taunts--Lupin quickly realized that Zenigata looked like he was ready to bite him and put his hands out in a rushed peace offering. Damn, the guy was touchy! "---relax, old man, I'm just yankin' you, But you know if the cops believed you about who you said I was I'd be talking to you from a morgue."

"Hah, but you'd still be alive, ya little bastard. I got it all figured out---you're immortal," Zenigata said in dead seriousness.

"Aw, Pops, you flatter me! But I can die like everyone else. That's why I live for today---!"

Zenigata cut his prattle short. From the rumbling shadow that piled up over his head you could tell that he didn't feel like messing around.

"Just get to the point, Lupin, I know ya didn't turn me in just to chat."

Lupin's jovial gabbing lost its purely innocuous tone and became unmistakably Lupin, assembling some wicked scheme in those gears in his brain that ran on permanent overdrive.

"Isn't it obvious, Pops? I've got a bone to pick with someone!" His grin turned impish and he folded his fingers, giving off the air of the puppetmaster veiled in shadow in a swivel chair stroking a cat, comfortably plotting the grisly demise of his enemies in the safety of his underground lair---it was hard to envision it since the master thief was in his boxers and a jail cell, but that's what imagination is for.

Boxers or not, Lupin fixed his malicious, wild-eyed gaze at Zenigata.

"But--!" he protested, unable to do much more than to shout from his spot on the floor, "This is low, even for you, Lupin--- I'm innocent!"

"You can drop the act, Pops," Lupin said, his mask of malice lowering to reveal an "it's getting old" face. He blew a puff of smoke in an idle direction. Zenigata tried his best to be puzzled, but he could tell that his enemy had already found him out. The thief strolled over to the cell door and flung a grin of smug satisfaction at the ex-cop. "Everyone knows that you took up the torch when I died." He jabbed a thumb through the bars at the wanted poster of Zenigata that was hanging incriminatingly on the wall outside the cell, as cocky and every bit of a bastard as Lupin. And it wasn't there because of some fluke, mistaken idenity, no, he had earned the infamy of being plastered on a wanted poster fair and square.

_Damnit, he probably knew the whole time! Son of a bitch sees everythin'!_

_Alright, the charade's done, so it's about time we got down to business!_

The joker strolled back away from the door. Zenigata had plummeted into the depths of--what was it, a gnawing guilt, guilt that he had turned to crime in the first place, regrets that he didn't try harder to get back to the right side of the law? Whatever it was it had the ex-cop in its clutches, squeezing the convinction out of him like seeds from an orange, making him indecisive and watery, like a gelatin mold. Lupin tried his best to be comforting though it was quite the change---he was more inclined to taunt him more than anything. Now that Zenigata had reached a moment of crisis, Lupin found himself scrambling for words that would make him feel better about his choice instead of a crack about Zenigata's possibly inflatable date.

"Hey, Pops, don't be so glum! So Interpol dropped you like France dropped the guillotine on Louis the 16th! What choice did you have?" He slapped Zenigata without malice on his exposed shoulder in a consoling gesture.

_What the hell is he waiting for?_

"Yeah, I guess. Well I hope you're happy 'cause I'm in pretty damn hot water!" the ex-cop groused. He crossed his arms with a scowl, as hard a feat as it was due to the handcuffs.

_Any minute, now.._

Maybe his mephistolean grin earlier was a bit much, and his cellmate had gotten the wrong idea.

"Now hold on. I never said it was against you," the thief assured. He waved his hands to signal that he intended no hostility between them. Zenigata was still on the defense, and he growled in for what his age but not for his character was an out of place petulance.

"Then why'd ya blow my cover like that?!"

Lupin smoked the cigarette to the end and crushed it under his bare heel, which was probably not a smart idea. "Eeeeaagh---son of a bitch!!!" He grabbed his singed foot with both hands. From the opposite cell a meathead jeered at the bouncing dumbass. Lupin gave a friendly one-fingered salute to them and plonked on the bed, still nursing his foot. "Well for one thing no offense meant or anything, but your disguise really blew," he said between rubbing the burned spot with his hand. That didn't do much for it. He recovered rapidly, either because he was a fast healer or he had a short attention span. "Now your drunk job with Maria the other day? That was more like it!" Zenigata stared at the floor, a fiery blush invading his face. Lupin confessed, shrugging his shoulders with nonchalance, "And since I knew that this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, I wanted to see what you looked like caught red-handed."

_Damnit, you sure like to play, Pops! I'm growing a beard!_

By now Zenigata was so furious that he had jumped to his feet and was about to rush Lupin, whatever the success of him doing that without tripping on his bound feet Lupin saw a particularly embarassing spill coming on and for once, spared him the humiliation. "Hey Pops, take a seat, I'm not through yet. I wanted to show you---" He opened his mouth, reached behind a molar and extracted a tiny device about the size of a needle's eye, and in the process of talking with his fingers in his mouth, garbling his words and informed Zenigata quite undramatically, "That you're just about out of options. The cops aren't taking you back, old pal." As if he doesn't know that. When are we going to get to the meat of this whole thing? "Go ahead, arrest me all you want! That is, if you're planning to spend the rest of your life in the joint." He held the saliva-coated vice in his fingers."Besides, you're already a thief."

"Yeah, what are ya gettin' at, Lupin?"

"Just sending out an invitation to join my little international enterprise, that's all."

_Thank you for riding Zenigata airways! We apologize for the five-friggin' hour delay before takeoff, the pilot was too busy hamming it up. We hope you enjoyed your flight!_

He threw up and caught the device in his palm. His round eyes gleamed menacingly through the murk. Zenigata glanced at his sometimes enemy, sometimes rival, sometimes friend. It was true, he'd just been playing with him that whole time---_Why the hell'd I do that? Don't really know, maybe for nostalgia for the old days--yeah, back then, I would've had everythin' to lose. _

"You got yourself a deal, Lupin the 3rd."

"Welcome to the family, Pops!" Lupin grabbed his cuffed hand, shaking it with a wicked snicker. The timid and coaxing façades slipped away. Zenigata roughly smacked Lupin with both hands on his shoulder and grinned broadly.

"Good to seeya again, Lupin. Thanks for playin' along."

Lupin's eyes bugged out as the steel cuffs scraped against his shoulder and then he released genuine frustration and bunched up his fists at his sides, spraying spit in the other's face, free of that dark shadow that for this whole time had only pretended to loom.

"Yeah, sure, NO PROBLEM, Pops! It could've just gone like, 'Hey Lupin, I'm a thief now. Want to join up with us? Yeah!'"

"Sure I could've, but after a while I really did start to think you were really gone for good. Then ya show up at Maria's place. I thought, bastard's been alive 4 months and he doesn't friggin' tell me? I'll make 'im work for it!" the other laughed, lusty and raucous, drawing nonplussed stares from the other cells. One of them swore off crack. Zenigata stood there, beaming with smugness, Lupin's teeth in a snarl. He dug his palm into his head and stomped off to the other end of the cell.

"Son of a bitch, remind me if I do another film, to not let you write the script!!"

"'Sides, I was happy you weren't dead, ya weasel."

"So happy that you pulled the whole gimmmick out of the usual place, huh?" Lupin asked in the tone that he had whenever he was pissed at Jigen or Goemon, which was not much more than childlike irritation, hurling around a box of tantrums before he would cool off and go grab a beer.

"Well, I figured I had to come up with some way to celebrate you not bein' dead!" Zenigata declared proudly, a risible grin forming on his visage. The joker had struck again.

"Wait for the champagne or something, man!" Lupin urged, for all of their sakes. I mean, what a stunt that had been. An obnoxiously drawn-out cavity search and five hours of fake therapy to take on a new partner. But considering who he had signed on to the gang it was more than worth it. He rolled his miniature device betwen his fingers and glanced sideways at Zenigata's cuffed extremities. "Why're you still wearing those, anyway?"

"These?" Wearing a confused demeanor as if he didn't know what Lupin was talking about, without much effort he slipped out of the restraints--no one knew how, either, since it was a well-guarded secret of a master thief. He gathered the restraints and whistling, stuffed both pairs into his boxers. Without missing a beat, Lupin caught the device in his hand one last time and flung it at the wall. It attached itself to the concrete. A red light blinked on the underside on its underside. 1..2..3.. The police station trembled as the wall burst into a falling pile of burning rubble with the force of the explosion and the two miscreants in their boxers ran into the night as if on wings, diabolical wings ready to unleash a hearty chaos upon the world.

A/N: I realized as I was writing this, that my first one was like Jack London's White Fang (domesticated wolf), and this one is like Call of the Wild, (dog joins a pack of wolves). XD Stay tuned for chapter 6.


	6. Apartment 50 And A Half

Legal Stuff: Jigem, Goemon, Fujiko, Zenigata, Lupin, and Maria belong to Monkey Punch or someone else.

The chapter title is a reference to my favorite novel. _The Day of the Turbins_ belongs to Mikhail Bulgakov.

Rant: Green jacket. It is highly praised by what seems like the majority of fans on the internet. The music makes me want to hit my head against the wall. I swear, the only WORD in the first green jacket opening is "Lupin the 3rd". I had honestly been looking forward to green jacket. I wanted to rip my ears out. People say that green jacket had a lot of idiosyncracies in the characters that the family-friendly red jacket cut out. I'd imagine that one of the idiosyncracies was that Zenigata wants to kill Lupin/enjoys seeing him naked. For those who don't believe me, watch green jacket episode 4. Some would call it badass but I think that's just sick. I love Zenigata in all of his incarnations but I can't stand his characterization in green jacket, with the exception of about 5 episodes. Lupin is vicious, but he doesn't do anything out of the ordinary. Goemon is also vicious. Fujiko looks like a butt. The only one I have no complaints is about Jigen. I like the ending song about the Walther P-38, I like ep. 23, Mamo Kyosuke was good---I hate how Pycal takes the majority of Zenigata's screentime in The Return of Pycal, which is also green jacket. XX

6: Apartment 50 And A Half

The yellow hanging lamp swung on its chain from the gaudy pastel ceiling. The room had the lived-in look: a tacky potted plant here or there, a painting of a field in which the field wasn't half as interesting as the naked woman in the background of the painting, empty cigarette cartons, smutty magazines conspcuously spread out over the floor, heaps of dirty laundry forming a small hill in the bathroom, skin cream right next to shaving cream. The kitchen smelled of Japanese and French cooking, dishes stacked up modestly. A small color TV sat between two couches. The remote that had been through endless disputes over to watch a western or a drama sat neglected next to two video game controllers. No one had bothered to turn of the TV so the HI-Score screen read from bottom to top Fujiko, Jigen, Lupin, Goemon. Nowhere in the apartment was there a visible signal that at any time the four who lived there could vacate, and the next tenants would never know what sort the former occupants had been.

Jigen thumbed through a page of Pravda while Goemon contemplated the dignity of mankind. Watching them at rest, it would be hard to believe that they were ruthless criminals.The woman of the gang stepped out of the shower, wrapped in a terrycloth towel. Her silky voice bled uneasiness about the whole arrangement.

"Do you think he'll actually go through with it? I mean, this is Pops we're talking about."

Jigen shrugged fom behind his Soviet newspaper with a grunt.

"Dunno, he's always been a wild card, so y' never know."

The one-man smoke factory churned out more of its white product as he crinkled what was once the forests of the Motherland. "But if he does end up doin' it--" His voice was now edged with dry contempt, he couldn't resist ragging on the woman. "He'll be a hell of a lot more loyal than you, friggin' slut."

The woman laughed it off elegantly, by elegant I mean with her mouth closed, unlike having your jaw hang down like that unrefined chauvinist pig. But, she was a mature adult and had better ways to get back at him. She donned a smile of honey and approached the arrogant jerk in an unthreatening way. _Men...there's more ways to brawl than big words, Jigen. Prepare to get your ass handed to you._

"What's that you're reading?"

"What's it to you, bitch?"

"Oh...Pravda. I didn't know you were a commie, Jigen. Going to build the dictatorship of the working class, elect yourself as the leader or something?"

"I'm no Red, whore, fuck off," he snapped. "I just ran some guns over to a few Whites in Moscow so they can beat the shit of the Central Committee. The spirit of the civil war isn't dead yet."

Fujiko couldn't give a rat's ass if Jigen was Red, White, or Pink. In fact, normally she wouldn't give a rat's ass about Jigen. But it was a certain aspect of his non-political life that interested her

for her present purposes.

"Was gun-running all that you did in Moscow?"

"Yeah, that's all. After I smuggled 'em, I went out and watched Day of the Turbins with a friend."

"And what was her name, Jigen?" Fujiko asked with seemingly slight interest.

"Natalia Aleksandrovna----hey, wait just a goddamn minute!!!" It was too late. The cat was out of the bag and Jigen fretted and howled and made a general commotion. Fujiko smirked at him and walked off, swaying her prominent hips as the barking man went off on a semi-intelligble tirade. He then shoved his hat over his head, crossed his legs, scowled with his chin protruding farther out than it usually did whenever he was upset. Jigen thought he caught Goemon chuckle, and he had half a mind to beat up his meditating ass, but----_Aw, to hell with it. You just don't get physical with Goemon unless you wanna see your guts that bad. I'll just sit here and--what the--?!_

Rattle.

Goemon's small but discriminating eye snapped open and he immediately broke off his spiritual gymnastics and grabbed his sword. Jigen dove behind the couch and peered around just enough so he could see the target, gripping his piece. Fujiko, still in her towel, ducked behind a potted plant, her Browning likewise at the ready. A hand grasped the outside of the window sill, caught the bottom of the glass and pushed it up. The gunman caught sight of a peep of the unmistakable red. Sighing, he holstered his gun and crawled out from behind the couch. Lupin clambered over the windowsill and landed steamed on the floor.

"What the hell, man, the door was friggin' super-glued shut! " Lupin yelled as he stalked towards his hairy partner. He was slovenly dressed, probably on account of having hurriedly stolen his clothes back from the cops, and his hair was scruffy in the back, and he reeked of prison. Oh, well, not his fault that Lupin decided to get caught by Zenigata so he could convince him to join their gang. And since he was the only one who came back it looks like that turned out to be a total waste of time. _Well, boss, hope y' enjoyed getting felt up by the damn guards. Heh._

Jigen and his beard shrugged and he narrated the whole story in a "not my fault" way.

"Well, so this friggin' ghost or something attacks Goemon, right? And his magic tags weren't doing shit so I go downtown and this old fossil hands me this superglue that's got some anti-ectoplasm shit and now the ghost's gone."

Lupin clawed at his face and groaned.

"Of all the---do you really expect me to believe that?!"

Fujiko, still in her towel, for once, backed the bearded man up.

"It's no joke, Lupin, it was every--hey, stop dicking around!" Lupin hadn't listened to the ghost story for very long when he gravitated to her like the planets to the sun. With a degenerate cackle he reached for one of them but Fujiko easily sidestepped him and he ended up on the floor.

"Give it up, Lupin, it's all look-but-don't-touch with that broad," someone said from outside the window. Jigen instinctively reached for his back holster and his Magnum, but raised his hand in front of the barrel as a signal to back off. Lupin did that round-faced pout whenever there was something dangling just beyond his reach---and man, he hated when that something was Fujiko's-- and picked himself up. Jigen scratched his hat with his brown fingers and shot their old enemy a surprised look.

"Whoa, Pops, is this official? You're really in?"

Zenigata nodded, adjusting his hat that had been laying at the bottom of the pile of his confiscated clothes. He had left his jacket unbuttoned, either to make a statement or because he was warm. His Shinsei hung at a somehow devious angle from between his teeth, smoldering in a playful heat. Goemon, usually the most likely of them to adhere to some sort of decorum, ventured to comment with righteous contempt,

"I will be obliged to instruct Zenigata in the art of elegant dining. That ramen on which he subsists is repellent."

"Oh, yeah--? Don't talk smack about my ramen!! It kept me goin' for twenty years!!!"

"Twenty, or two hundred?"

As the samurai and the ex-cop fought over each other's dietary habits, Fujiko had slipped out of the towel and into a bright red women's suit jacket, Jigen guffawed over life's little---or big ironies---the hostilties faded into the past, if things one day returned to the way they were, so be it, no lost love----they lived in the now---and right now, they were fighting over the mundane--the scene in the apartment was so banal, gone was the constant threat that the guy would without warning would pounce on you and put you away. And now, he was just one of the guys, enmeshed in the world that evaded the cameras, the press, the reporters---the day-to-day existence at which fanatical groupies would scratch their heads and ask, "This is Lupin the 3rd's gang?"

Lupin himself had momentarily removed himself from the chaos had sprung into the fifth dimension somewhere in the bathroom and had returned with a blueprint of tonight's target--oh, what he had done to get those, no one really had to know. He unrolled the floor plan on the table and got down to business. Jigen sensed that Lupin was finally ready to work, and headed to the table, lured by the aroma of money. "Alright, people! It's time for the big bash. The entire ground floor is one giant sensor, so we're going to enter from up here---"

Zenigata, his eyes roving with suspicion and his gut twitching at the burning feeling that some unwanted eavesdropper was listening outside, headed to the window and shut it.

---

A cat mewed at the door that suddenly burst open, flooding the entryway with moonbeams. Zenigata thundered out into the street. Alarm struck him as he heard the sound of someone else's footsteps. This delay could screw up the entire job. Lupin and the others had left by the roof. He would handle the ground security. He pressed himself flat against the wall of the apartment building. _Damnit, we go in 10 minutes. But I've got to take care of this clown first. Make me late for my fist job with Lupin, will ya?_

Walk, walk.

Zenigata coiled, set to jump the would-be assailant. He leaped out for a preemptive strike, but pulled back at the last minute and almost landed face-first in the pavement when he realized who it was.

"Koichi!"

"Oh, just you, Maria-!---I, uh----can't gab, Lupin's escaped!"

He scrambled to his feet and took off at a run again, all the while trying to conceal the genuine shadow of fear that came over him when Maria smirked.

"Liar," came the stab of an accusation.

"Wait--but--how'd you know?" he asked, casting a flustered glance over his shoulder. Maria followed him at a jog.

"My team's been in charge of covering the Zenigata case ever since it got hot."

His brown face whitened with anxiety. "Then it was you listening back there---and you had me figured for a phony at the apartment, too!" The realizzation hit him like a frying pan to the skull. Maria answered with an incriminating "mm-hmm!" They ran onwards, and he felt another pursuer on his heels other than the purple-haired girl--a feeling that hadn't truly plagued him in a long time, not since he had picked his first pocket after Interpol had given him the boot and he had no other recourse---breaking all of his what had been up until then inviolable principles, to follow the law to the letter, to do what was right---and on one fateful night just like that he had gone down the road of crime and never looked back.

Maria was starting to fall behind..Damn, she wouldn't get those photos if she lost Koichi now. If she had heard them right, the Lupin gang would break into the compound in 9 minutes. She had no idea where the place even was, and from the vibes he was giving off, she had to set him straight. Who knew if he would actually get smashed for real this time?

"Koichi--wait," She took another big breath of air and ran all the harder. Unsurprised that Zenigata didn't slow down---I mean, how long did she know him, he should really have a sign on his back that read, "Brakes for no one". "I'm not here to dig up bad memories---"

"Y--you mean it?" the man asked still at a run, with joyful tears soaking his eyes. Maria didn't answer, by now too out of breath. Good, no need for that façade anymore. If only he would remove that other façade, if there was something else under there. Maybe it was just wishful thinking on her part. But for now, she was content with just being his shadow--_It's maybe the closest I'll ever get._

"C'mon, Maria, if ya wanna get good shots, ya better hurry up!" Zenigata pushed, his voice bursting with near-endless stamina. It thrilled him that she hadn't given up on him as a fraud--well, yeah, he was a fraud. He was a thief and a liar and a degenerate. But somehow she was okay with it. Maybe she would never look at him in that way, but_...well, one step at a time, I guess._

A brisk wind tossed a heap of paper against the wall. The layer of trash in the gutters was steadily thinning, a sure sign that they were entering the fashionable district. The fronts of the state-of-the-art buildings shimmered with massive investement. High-class businesses and gaudy neon lights drew in scores of tourists, international entrpreneurs--both legit or otherwise---this was the ideal site to work---and the cash register was about to ring in astronomical numbers.

A/N: Conclusion in chapter 7!


	7. Citizens of the Nation of Earth

Legal StuffL Maria, Jigen, Lupin, Goemon, Zenigata, and the rest of the Lupin III characters belong to Monkey Punch and someone else. Chapter title is blatantly taken from Monkey Punch.

Rant: No rant this time. ;

A/N: Last chapter.

7: Citizens of the Village of Freedom on the Nation of Earth

Sirens howled through the city, screaming urgency.

"Five burgalars have broken into the headquarters of the Tokyo branch of the multi-billion dollar American company---the Tokyo police department and Interpol have surrounded the building.."

Scores of reporters swamped the blocked-off entrance, fighting tooth and nail for the bst shots. Rumors flew--Lupin the 3rd was alive--! No, he couldn't be--the guy had to be immortal! Wasn't he executed months ago? Longer than that----who's with him? Does he have accomplices?

"We've just confirmed with the chief of police that Lupin the 3rd is indeed the burgalar---along with Lupin's regular partners Jigen Daisuke, Ishikawa Goemon, and Mine Fujiko, the master thief and his gang has become a legend in our time--a household name--and what of the news that Zenigata Koichi, once the dauntless inspector who swore on his ancestor Zenigata Heiji's bones that he would capture the master thief, has joined forces with his former enemy---" The reporter without blinking caught the commissioner in his view and charged to intercept him. "one minute--the chief of Interpol himself was just here---chief, a word!"

A man with thinning hair bearing his badge fought his way through the bog of swarming reporters and grabbed the microphone.

"Lupin the 3rd has gone too far. He will not make a mockery of the ICPO---justice will prevail."

"Do you have any comments about Zenigata's apparent alliance with Lupin the 3rd---"

"All I can say he was a miscreant from the start---I knew it from the day we hired him---and sure enough, the second that Lupin was pronounced dead he betrayed the ICPO, the ingrate--! And now this debacle at the Howard Howard Corporation---In my sesventeen years as commissioner I have never seen such an outrage---but that's it, the world's law enforcement agencies will end both of their careers as of tonight!"

"There you have it from the chief of police himself in what looks like a grand face-off between five of the most notorious criminals and the police---"

Far below the mob, Maria had crept into the alcove overlooking the ground floor. She reached into her shorts pocket and pulled out a roll of fresh film .She went over of what she remembered of what Koichi told her of the plan in her head. Her eyes roved over the ground floor, for the moment, empty. Supposedly that entire space was rigged with a sensor and bad stuff would happen if it were tripped. So they had to find the sensor and destroy it or something---it sounded pretty complicated, from the bits and pieces that she heard of it.

She took a breath that she suspended with the thrill of doing this--and as the seconds on her pocket watch ticked down to the planned signal, she lifted her camera and held it at the ready, anxious and waiting to catch the man who was a clown to just about everybody else, but to her, her superhero.

A gunshot cracked in the distance. Smoke poured out of the disabled sensor defunct in the grate. A tile quivered on the ceiling and once loose, tumbled to the floor. A rope dropped from the yawning gap and three shapes slid with blinding agility down to the floor. A larger shape came running from the entrance, meeting them in the center of the basement. Lupin divided them and the former officer remained in the center of the room while Lupin, Goemon, and Fujiko headed for the giant steel vault entrance that stood not-too-modestly in the wall. Jigen stayed behind the grate, ready to deal with the sensor's self-repair system.

The assiduous samurai sliced the vault door to pieces which crashed to the floor with a deafening series of clangs. Lupin and Fujiko rushed through the makeshift entrance and Goemon with impeccable efficiency turned on his sandaled heel and flew at the onslaught of the new wave of opposition.

"They're ICPO---!" Zenigata cried, not expecting the police to replace the security guards that he had knocked out--not this fast, anyway. Goemon reassured with the calm only fitting to the master swordsman,

"They do not stand a chance against Zantetsuken."

The thief raised his sword, taking some sort of perverse pleasure in the police officers' inevitable humiliation once he would have had rid them of their precious garments, the symbol of external vanity, nothing more. Like a wolf he pounced, slashing down with his godly weapon. He sliced--no...no---his expression dropped in horror. The _yam..._that cursed demon bile.Yam shields, he couldn't believe it. He found the blade wedged in the devil's tongue. "You--you didn't happen to put this in your--report, did you?"

"'Course I did! Back then it was gold---damnit, why'd they pick now to believe me, huh?!" Zenigata growled in confused resentment. He rushed in to help Goemon, who was helpless in the face of the yam-toting cops. A flurry of rope-cuffs whacked the yam shields out of the cops' hands. Goemon finally ripped the blade out of the yam. Grinning cruelly, he deprived the police of their clothes and they fled in morbid terror and embarassment. Goemon was about to sheathe Zantetsuken when the gruff voice of his associate crackled on his earpiece.

"Rgh, fuck it all, Goemon, we didn't count on the security in the friggin' air vent. I'm tied up here and the self-repair's gonna kick in about two seconds, so get your asses outta there!"

Jigen's warning was cut off with a blasting alarm that set off red lights that flooded the entire basement.

"What's goin' on?!"

With alarming punctuality a row of what looked like cannons protruded from the wall in all directions. "..Son of a bitch..!" The cannons spat out lasers that scorched the air and blasted the floor. It instantly melted and the two thieves sped off in a frenzy towards the vault, while the nude cops scrambled for the basement entrance, no doubt to call for backup and to get the bleeding hell out of there. The criminals vaulted over the remains of the door and made the entryway and two opened doors. Lupin and Fujiko were probably at the target now. Jigen crawled bedraggled out of a small hole he shot at some place in the air vent and rejoined the other two, passing through the two opened gates. Just this last tunnel and they would join the others at the rendez-vous point.

When they heard the cocking of government revolvers behind them. More backup. The lasers had stopped firing, too, freeing a path for the cops to make an untimely ambush.

"Don't move. You're all under arrest.

Jigen squeezed off his six rounds, winging six of the cops but emitting a growl of pain as a bullet lodged in his shooting arm. He dropped to the ground with a grunt.

"Jigen..!"

"Goddamn it," he gurgled incoherently, grabbing his arm. What a time to screw up. Looks like I'm the dead weight on this job. Goemon readied to cut them down, but stopped by Zenigata's bark,

"You get 'im outta here. I'll handle this."

Without a word Goemon heaved Jigen onto his shoulder and dashed off down the tunnel. Zenigata pulled his own Colt that he had stolen back at the police station during his little theater production. He took a thievish stance, bent-legged instead of straight and honorable against the wall of raised guns. The commissioner stood there authorative and assured---he was offering the felon one last way out. He who had kept him afloat for so long---surely the ex-inspector owed him his career---and it was time for him to pay back the loan. It was only decent, after all.

"Zenigata, you're busted. Surrender now and I'll guarantee that the judge will lighten your sentence."

The thief returned the magnanimous offering with derision. He laughed acerbicly.

"From what, life to 75 years? Sorry, chief, but I've heard that before."

So he was beyond rehabilitation. Have it your way, scum.

"Hmph. Take him, down, men."

The entire squad fired, once again, showing no recognition of their former superior. Not that was even relevant even more. Zenigata hit the floor and fired back, knocking the revolvers out of their hands.The pieces scattered to the floor. Before they could re-arm themselves Zenigata had pulled out his rope cuffs and bound them together in a dark blue bundle, a malicious grin darkening his features. The cops lay there, tied up, red-faced from embarassment, and in no position to untie themselves---that was the exclusive province of a thief. Tipping his hat to his once-colleagues, he was off down the tunnel.

---

Jigen lay perspiring painfully against the wall, grabbing his bloodied arm with his teeth clenched and trying not to show how much it fucking hurt. Goemon and Fujiko stood watch as Lupin was punching in the final code that would yield the goods.

"It was too well-timed to be a coincidence, I think," Fujiko remarked with the hint of sweat bead clinging to her temple, her arms folded across her bosom. "And he took them alone, so there's no witnesses. I think it was all a setup."

"..You really think so?" Lupin asked as he was hunched over the panel, deciphering the code with what normally would have been his usual sangfroid but this time, he was just a little disturbed. _Come on,old man...You'd never stab me in the back..._On the other hand, it had all gone too wrong to not be some kind of setup...Jigen getting shot, the second squad of cops, the fact that he had stayed behind with them. He knew the plan to the last detail and it would've been so easy for him to rat them out to his old buddies. Maybe it was just 'cause they had been enemies for so long, he couldn't see him as anything else.

"This is it," Goemon announced quietly, with no intention of being dramatic.

They waited, waited. Nothing. Lupin's widened grin indicated that he had almost cracked the security, but inside was a pang of dread. He kind of liked having the old man on their side and it would be a shame to let him go. And plus if he did betray them he would have a whole army of cops on their tails. A major blunder for him being a master thief. Not a bright prospect. And only silence answered the burning question.

A beep pierced the air as the final door yielded, revealing the glittering stash.

"So, you weren't plannin' to cut me out of the deal, were ya?"

Zenigata approached, alone, his coat slightly dirty, and his face alight with a smirk. And it was in that moment that Lupin knew that Pops was theirs for good. The Inspector was gone, only Zenigata remained. The gang, including bloody Jigen despite his bitch of a wound, attacked the diamonds that rose to the high ceiling, grabbing sacks, their own hats, anything that they could hold their haul in. It was the first heist of many, with Zenigata on their side, nothing could top them. And in the space of months they laid waste to the bank accounts of the proud, made beggars of corrupt governments, emptied the vaults of misers, redistributing the wealth of those who could afford to lose it, a nightmare for civilized society and the underworld alike.

The beginning

A/N: Well, that's the end. Thanks for reading. This was actually the most action-esque chapter. Oo Maybe I should have put it under Drama or Angst. Oops. Ah, well. ;


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